


look like th' innocent flower;

by cliffkiffle



Series: bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue. [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Peter Pan & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU in which Wendy is queen of neverland and Peter is her bird, Gen, the violence isn't that graphic but just to be safe, very minor darlingpan honestly barely worth mentioning, wendy is persephone we all know this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 04:47:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7787332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cliffkiffle/pseuds/cliffkiffle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Careful. Wendy Darling may look innocent — but she's a bloody demon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	look like th' innocent flower;

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I'm just obsessed with the concept of Wendy staging a coup and taking Neverland out from under Pan's thumb. For who could suspect sweet, innocent Wendy of being a mastermind — especially when she's locked in a cage?

**and you're scared, and you're sure that your spine will dissolve**   


When Wendy Darling was young, she learned _how to be_ from her parents. Her mother was lovely, clever and beautiful, and she taught Wendy how to turn someone’s insult into a compliment; how to be kind and how to be brave. Her father was altogether a more serious man, but it was he who nurtured Wendy’s love for stories; he who encouraged her to keep dreaming even when real life dug its claws into her. Mr Darling knew about the power of stories, you see; he knew about adulthood, too, which is why he knew that being able to escape reality for a time was important. 

As she grew, Wendy learned _how to be_ from her teachers, who thought it was crucial for young girls to be independent and smart. She learned _how to be_ from her brothers, who needed, always, a flexible player who could take on any role in any game. She learned _how to be_ from the heroines in her novels. They were romantic and resourceful and remained optimistic and innocent, even in the face of great peril — and so did Wendy.

Wendy thought that she would always be that way: kind, imaginative, innocent. She was old enough, now, to know that people didn’t really change when they became adults, not really. Sometimes they softened and sometimes they grew thick skins and sometimes they pretended to be altogether different than they were, but at their core they remained the same.

 

* * *

When Wendy Darling arrived in Neverland, she had to learn _how to be_ all over again. The island didn’t seem to know that Wendy was meant to be the heroine; the poisonous plants and vicious animals came after her all the same. She was a toy of Neverland: the Lost Boys poked and scratched at her, children in a zoo learning how cruel they could be before she broke. Pan himself was sweet at first, until he decided it would be more fun to be unkind. Then he would change his mind all over again: charming when it suited him; cruel for kicks. When he was being vicious, Pan didn’t care for Wendy’s innocence or her bravery or her optimism. He wanted to take them from her, which made Wendy cling all the harder.

All Pan seemed to appreciate of Wendy was her beauty, and even then he looked at her like an addict: mingled loathing and desire. She couldn’t do much to change her face, so instead she changed her behaviour, pulling herself small and quiet. That was the first thing she learned in Neverland: things that are unnoticeable are not beautiful.

The next thing Wendy learned was that the Lost Boys loved stories. Not the stories that Wendy loved; they jeered at the idea of love and happy endings. But Pan demanded stories for his Lost Boys, so Wendy put away her fairytales and spun plots of murder and duplicity and bloodthirsty chases through black forests. These tales were inspired by her own explorations of Neverland, which Pan seemed to allow — and even encourage — to demonstrate to Wendy just how dangerous her prison was. But Pan didn’t realise that Wendy was studying her environs: the man-eating plants, dripping poison and sickly sweet fragrance; the cunning mermaids, beautiful enough to lure you close and strong enough to drown you; the wolves who ran together through the forests but who would happily turn on a pack-mate if survival were on the line.

Wendy knew that Pan held the puppet-strings of Neverland; truly, no one could leave unless he allowed it. So the next time he looked at her with blown pupils and teeth clenched around some hunger he refused to name, she did not shrink back. She squared her shoulders and named it for him.

Was he relieved that Wendy had stopped resisting, or did he regret the loss of his favourite plaything? Either way, he allowed Wendy closer, perhaps thinking to destroy her eventually, too short-sighted or too arrogant to suspect that she was planning the same thing. Pan rejoiced as Wendy sloughed off her layers, shaping herself, or so he thought, into what he wanted her to be.

 

* * *

 

Kindness was the first to go: Wendy slew a rabbit rather than let it free from her snare, and Pan had her skin it, devour it before the warmth of life had even left its flesh.

Wendy’s innocence left her when Pan's camp was ambushed, in wind and rain and darkness. Later, in the light of dawn they counted the bodies and found that Wendy herself had slain three of their attackers. Her silver dagger still jutted from one of their necks, and she pulled it out, fascinated by the viscera clinging to the metal; the smooth dark hole in the flesh. It was a sight that all Lost Boys had come to relish. Wendy never thought she’d enjoy it too. She wiped the blade on her dress, a dark stain across her stomach, and Pan declared her officially corrupted, raising her hand with the dagger high above her head while the Lost Boys cheered.

Pan himself saw to it that she no longer craved romance. How could she, after it had been tied up with his cruelty for so long? Wendy no longer wished for pockets of sweetness, trinkets ofaffection from Pan, no longer looked at him wide-eyed, hopeful, fearful. All she expected was violence now, so Pan gave it to her, and had it returned; a symbiotic catharsis of teeth and claws, bruises and blood-stained smiles.

But Wendy’s bravery, her cunning and her adaptability…these she kept, hidden under layers of vapid bloodlust and snarled hair and a stained nightgown, barefoot and clutching weapons in both fists. And when the Lost Boys began to mutter, as they did every decade or so, of their unhappiness under Pan’s ferocious dictatorship, Wendy was there spreading seeds of doubt, pulling strings around the boys even as she promised Pan her allegiance.

From there it was not hard to bring about Pan’s downfall. He had never seen her as a threat, or even a person independent of his own machinations. He thought that her metamorphosis had been his own doing and could not fathom her turning against him. It only took one night, once Wendy had formulated her plan, to put it into action, and when the dust had settled, the sun rose yellow and hot over a new era in Neverland. She put Pan in a cage, one that he had fashioned for her long ago, when she was innocent and kind. He bared his teeth through the bars, impressed even as he spat curses in her face.

Pan's shadow untethered itself from him. Now it followed Wendy, as did the Lost Boys. The beasts that had once stalked Wendy, hoping to make her into a meal, now shrank back as she passed. The carnivorous plants bloomed for her, dripping their poisons into vials for her to use. No mermaid, now, would dare try to drown her. Everything the island had lavished upon Peter it now gave to Wendy. Everything except an escape. Somehow that power was still tied up with the caged boy: the only thing he would never give her, and the only thing she could not take by force. So Wendy kept him alive for her own amusement, devising games to make him sing, learning everything about Neverland that he had tried to keep from her. A queen must have her songbird.


End file.
